Working Women in Russia

The women’s double burden of simultaneously juggling their working life with their domestic lives has not improved much since 1936 in Russia. Up until the late 1970s, women practically had twice the workload as men. In the 1930s, the Soviet state basically falsely advertised women’s emancipation by massively increasing women’s participation in the workforce while undermining their facade by cutting wages in half and reversing the importance of the states role in child raising and placed it on the Russian family.

In the United States in the 1950’s, you see a more complete split in the working and domestic spheres with gender roles. The stereotypical nuclear family, such as ones that can be recognized on the popular television show “Mad Men”, would have a man in the workforce, with the women taking care of the domestic chores and child raising. In modern American society, where women have a much larger share of high paying jobs than they did roughly 70 years ago, there are more male figures which are involving themselves more heavily in the domestic environment, where the women make most of the income.

One things which fascinated me about women’s jobs in Soviet Russia throughout the 20th century is that they consistently dominated teaching and education. How revered were teachers in the Soviet Union compared to the United States? What about in compared to a culture which places a higher emphasis in education? Such as China or Korea?